Pages

Book Ratings

Saturday, November 8, 2014

Book Review : Oryx and Crake

Release Date: March 30, 2004

Pages: 400

Genre: Dystopian

Publisher: Random House

I generally get most
of my Adult literary fiction recommendations from podcasts and one I've heard a lot
about is Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. I picked this up at my Indie book
store (shout out to Fountain Bookstore) after the bookseller told me how much she loved Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale which I have but haven't read yet.

Snowman is one of the last survivors of the human race. He lives on the outskirts of a primitive group of people known as Crakers. But who are these Crakers ? What happened to the world ? Could it all have been avoided ?

Snowman (Formerly know as just Jimmy) grew up during the golden age of science, where those who work for big pharmaceutical and science corporations are an upper class and grow up in sterilized suburban modules.

There they create animals like Pigoons that can
grow replacement livers or headless masses of chicken like creatures ChickenNoobies that become the next
big food craze. In this new age of science and technology Jimmy gets a first hand view of how the end of the world comes about.

For me this book had some uncomfortable moments, there is a focus on child abuse and human trafficking that is told (from the characters POV) in an incompassionate way. The science and structure of the society is was what really kept me reading. I had to know how the world went from high science to squalor.

I plan to continue the series, something about the world is fascinating and from what I understand the other novels focus on different characters in the same situation, so it would be cool to see how characters in less privileged situations are effected. I also really like the names in this book, the names for the bio/pharmaceutical companies (HappaCuppa), the animals created (Pigoons, ChickenNoobies) and even the misnomers (titular Oryx and Crake) in the novel just have a great sound to them.